The epicenter was nearest the Indonesian province of Aceh, where governmental authorities quickly turned on warning sirens.
Many Islamic teachers in the rural parts of Aceh, and their students, are inclined to trust this scholarly Muslim.
The province of Aceh, in particular, has a powerful independence movement.
With the exception of the continuing conflict in the province of Aceh, Indonesia is now more internally peaceful than seemed imaginable when she took over.
The loss of Aceh's natural wealth would certainly be a major blow to the capital, Jakarta, which sits on the populous but resource-barren island of Java.
As in other breakaway areas, many of Aceh's 4m people feel they are not seeing their fair share of the wealth flowing from the province's huge oil and gas fields.
Second, he frequently makes contradictory statements, which may do him no harm in Indonesia's main island of Java, where oblique utterances are the norm, but which infuriate the straight-talking people of Aceh.
President Megawati Sukarnoputri has pledged to rebuild the war-torn province and hopes to win over the people by allowing the future provincial government to keep 70% of Aceh's substantial oil and gas revenues.
When Mr Wahid claimed that he had reached a ceasefire agreement with the exiled leader of a separatist group from the province of Aceh, it was discounted even before the rebel leader concerned had denied it.
In fact, until annexed by the Dutch in 1874, the sultanate of Aceh was a distinct and powerful state which at times controlled a large slice of Sumatra and channelled much of South East Asia's trade through its ports.
Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the boss of Indonesia's new REDD agency, was previously in charge of rebuilding Aceh after the tsunami.
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The earthquake measured 8.6 on the Richter scale, occurred 434km south-west of Banda Aceh Province in Sumatra at 08.38 UTC.
Patricia Schulz, an expert on CEDAW from Switzerland, spoke out against the entirety of the Aceh law at the July CEDAW meeting in New York City.
Wahid's administration is already struggling to quell resurgent separatist movements in the resource-rich provinces of Papua and Aceh and to combat a general drift toward lawlessness.
The provincial parliament chiefs of Maluku and Aceh (both retired military officers) have asked that Military Command Regions (known as Kodam in Indonesian) be reinstated in their troubled areas.
Tensions between Jakarta and Aceh have been running high recently over the decision by Aceh's parliament to use the flag of the now defunct separatist Free Aceh Movement as its official symbol, the BBC's Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta reports.
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In less than 12 hours the Tsunami had finally reached the coast of Africa from its point of origin in Banda Aceh.
In the three troubled regencies of Pidie, North Aceh and East Aceh, the vote was postponed to June 19 and 20, but has now been postponed again.
In 2003, then Indonesian president Megawati Sukarnoputri agreed that as part of a ceasefire agreement, the separatist Aceh province was allowed to institute Shariah law as the law of the province.
Five months ago, many found it hard to imagine the village of Peuken Bada, in Aceh Province, recovering.
This is the lesson of history -- from Northern Ireland to the Balkans, from Camp David to Aceh -- that with leaders of courage and vision, compromise is possible, and conflicts can be ended.
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Asked the simplest of questions, the deputy editor of the weekly newspaper Kontras in Banda Aceh frowns in concentration.
But Mr Wahid's assertion of civilian control has not extended to Aceh.
But before that can happen, the government will have to calculate what kind of self-rule it can offer Aceh, and whether this would differ from the autonomy options being considered for other provinces.
The situation in Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, is equally troubling.
But Aceh managed to bring a measure of control to the flood of aid by setting up a special agency.
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Eleven conventional banks with operations in Aceh province are studying the conversion of their branches in the northern Sumatra territory, says Mulya Siregar, a senior analyst at the central bank's newly established Sharia division.
Unlike East Timor, which was a former Portuguese colony invaded by Indonesia in 1975 and has now won the right to independence, Aceh was long administered as a part of the Dutch East Indies before the entire archipelago, or most of it, became Indonesia in 1949.
Aceh is more devoutly Islamic than the rest of the country, whereas Papua is tribal and Christian.
In recent days the DRN has coordinated the arrival and distribution of aid supplies at airports in Sri Lanka and Bandar Aceh.
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